Posted on 10/11/2011 7:33:02 AM PDT by RobinMasters
Odd of this story becoming the big topic of tonights debate? Id say sure thing:
Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romneys landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romneys own health care advisers and experts to help craft the act now derided by Republicans as Obamacare.
The records, gleaned from White House visitor logs reviewed by NBC News, show that senior White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006, when the Republican presidential candidate was governor of Massachusetts. One of those meetings, on July 20, 2009, was in the Oval Office and presided over by President Barack Obama, the records show.
The White House wanted to lean a lot on what wed done in Massachusetts, said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
...ruhk roh...
So long, Mitt
Thanks for playing, and please enjoy this can of Turtle Wax and the home version of our GOP Primary Game.
I suspect Cain and Perry are going to thrash you back and forth across the head with this tonight.
Hope you enjoy your new career, whether it be TV spokesman for a chain of funeral homes, or playing Herman in a television revival of The Munsters.
Cain needs to hit Romney on this tonight.
The way Mitt works, it will be clear that he had nothing to do with this and had no idea who his advisers were speaking to.
Like how he kept the Boy Scouts out of the Olympics, not a trace of his hand in the decision.
The optics may look weird, but the substance isn’t, unless there is more to be reported.
Hussein, for instance, has continued to use the eeeeevil Halliburton Corporation for government contracts—and no one equates Hussein with Dick Cheney.
Advisors in common do not bedfellows make.
Hell, Hussein has had Paul Volcker, a friend of Reagan, as an advisor. But Hussein is 180 degrees from Ronaldus Magnus.
In Romney’s defense Obamacare could be legal at the State level. States get their authority not from the Federal Constitution but from their own constitution empowered directly by their people.
To that end States could be authorized to do almost anything domestically, including tyrannize their people with individual mandates.
Aside from the Federal Government thou medicare, SCHIP, Medicaid, and federal lones Subsiding Massachusetts Socialized healthcare scam. Something that MUST end without delay.
There is nothing wrong with Massachusetts driving freedom loving people out and providing a place for tyrant lovers to dwell in their own excrement.
Romney needs to acknowledge the failures of the Massachusetts system, and agree to end all Federal Subsides. If the State of Massachusetts(sitting on a major port) can’t make socialized Medicine stand on its own two feet nobody can.
It is wrong to make the people of other states, including refugees from Massachusetts to pay for their repressive system.
Gruber’s role in advising Romney an Obama never was a secret (though his consulting contract of nearly $400K wasn’t divulged at the time he was shamelessly championing Obamacare on the Op-ed pages of the NY Slimes). Now he’s working on a comic-book version of Obamacare. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1315137 How fitting. Here’s hoping it’s released just days before SCOTUS declares the whole monstrosity unconstitutional.
“Romney needs to acknowledge the failures of the Massachusetts system, and agree to end all Federal Subsides.”
This is the dirty little secret of Romneycare. The individual mandate is odious, but a) Romney originally wanted an opt-out for anyone willing to post a bond to cover catastrophic health costs (which IMHO undercuts its otherwise anti-libertarian nature); and b) a state mandate does not raise U.S. constitutional issues, whereas a federal version clearly does.
What’s most offensive about Romneycare is that it’s built on the backs of federal taxpayers. Absent nearly $1 billion in federal subsidies, the economics of Romneycare never would have worked. The selling point of the program was that failure to enact would mean losing this massive windfall of federal subsidies. It’s the same house of cards that TennCare was built on. The problem is that once Tennessee massively expanded its Medicaid program, it discovered it couldn’t afford the tab even with Uncle Sam’s help. Once it figured that out, it pulled the plug and hundreds of thousands who had come to rely on TennCare lost their coverage.
Massachusetts is a richer state, so the game can continue longer. But one could argue that absent Obamacare being enacted, Romneycare eventually also would have run out of money and had to undergo the identical massive cutbacks in coverage somewhere down the road. In that regard, Massachusetts politicians (after Romney was long gone) had every incentive to assist and encourage Obama in passing a law to effectively preemptively bail them out.
Romneycare is all I ever needed to know about this faux conservative candidate. He’s nothing but a closet liberal dressed up like a conservative. If he wins the GOP nomination then it will convince me that the whole presidential election circus is rigged (not that I haven’t thought that for the past few elections anyway).
This is basically the thing I worry most about with Romney, if he becomes President he might be inclined to continue the Federal subsidies. Thus forcing the rest of us to finance Massachusetts monstrosity.
PS: It doesn’t undercut its anti-libertarian nature to require people to post bond to pay for catastrophic services.
Hasn’t anyone ever heard of folk refusing to “be put on life support”, IE “catastrophic care”? Why cant their fascist goverment allow people to make their own financial choices via healthcare?
Suppose someone wants to dump all their money in to living in the moment and forget about the risk, is that not their right?
Even if Romney will not renounce Romney-care he MUST agree to end all federal subsidies to Massachusetts . The Federal tax payer should NOT be on the hook for supporting the Massachusetts disaster.
“Suppose someone wants to dump all their money in to living in the moment and forget about the risk, is that not their right?”
Well, this is the dirty little secret about Obamacare. The federal government requires hospitals to provide emergency care without regard to ability to pay. So yes, in principle, if someone wanted to roll the dice and accept the consequences of a gamble gone wrong, I myself would have no objection (and correspondingly, would feel no moral imperative to assist someone who taken such a gamble that turned out badly). The problem is, the federal government has interfered to preclude such gambles. True, people can request Do Not Resuscitate orders, but the problem is that in too many situations, the patient isn’t even in a position to make a rational choice: they arrive at the hospital in an ambulance, comatose, and the hospital is obliged by law to spend vast resources (in some cases) keeping that individual alive.
We’d be better of dumping the emergency treatment MANDATE entirely or at least saying that anyone who has elected to be uninsured has waived their “right” to emergency care. That way, there is a real consequence to the choice to go without coverage and the risk is borne by the individual rather than society. But so long as the choice is between forcing taxpayers to absorb the risk/cost of those who lack coverage and forcing the uninsured themselves to bear more of that risk through a mandate to buy coverage or post a bond demonstrating their ability to pay should their gamble go wrong, I can live with the latter. It’s also fine by me if our default presumption is that everyone has implicitly authorized a DNR order absent proof positive that they prefer and can pay for more aggressive treatment.
Indeed I find it reprehensible that our politicians aren’t point out this basic evil THEY created. instead they let the democrats argue for mandating everyone have health insurance in order to overcome the Evil THEY CREATED.
Of course that would also involve facing the other unconstitutional nightmare of the federal goverment mandating a private company give out its services for free. (where is the authority.)
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